Minty, the rent-a-cause rebel with a frothy latte

Here she is, St Minty of Challis, the patron saint of modern activism, the rent-a-cause rebel, the warrior queen of the fashionable struggle.

Today, no public confrontation is safe from the attentions of Minty and people like her. No demo or rally is complete without their presence, their showy participation, their contribution and cheer for the cause that is dear.

Here she is, posing like an apocalyptic Joan of Arc in front of a blazing caravan at Dale Farm this week. A caravan, I might add, that was set alight by the protesters, not by anyone else.

Not even a traveller: Minty at the Dale Farm site

Minty, whose real name is believed to be Donna Berry, is not even one of the Dale Farm travellers who vowed to fight to the death if they were evicted from their illegal homes.

To be fair, 45-year-old Minty did claim that she was ‘related’ to some of the travellers, to be sure. Some reports stated that she also claimed to be a Muslim living in fashionable Notting Hill in West London and was a child counsellor.

Counselling them on what? How to make a Molotov cocktail out of a juice carton? The tumble-tots’ guide to insurrection? What on earth did they do to deserve her?

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The one thing that is for sure is the level of Minty/Donna’s commitment to the cause. Look at that nobility of expression. She makes Buffy the Vampire Slayer look like an amateur. She really cares! Or does she?

I can’t be alone in thinking that the picture looks curiously staged, somehow both elegiac and brash at the same time. No wonder it ended up in so many newspapers. Maybe Minty/Donna just needed a nice picture because she happens to be selling that crucifix on eBay? ‘Christ on the cross, one broken arm. Some smoke damage, £5 ono.’

Also, I particularly like her green thermo-vac coffee beaker, clasped affectionately in her right hand. Perhaps that is the Minty chalice. Apparently, it was so hard to work out what was going on because the activists, travellers and police were all outnumbered by a posse of humbug-spouting BBC journalists determined to wax lyrical about this great miscarriage of justice wreaked upon the innocent travelling people who were just trying to preserve their ancient way of life.

Commitment to the cause: A silhouetted image of Minty, whose real name is though to be Donna Berry, against a backdrop of smoke and flames

Spare me. For the saga of the Dale Farm travellers has produced more gas and hogwash than any other incident in recent public life. Ridiculous allegations of ethnic cleansing and racism were promulgated by certain pundits and presenters alike, while activists such as Minty took to the barricades with their usual alacrity.

No matter that the travellers were simply breaking the law that everyone else must abide by, people projected their own political attitudes onto the event and acted accordingly. It is all becoming depressingly familiar.

Out on the barricades, what exactly are activists such as Minty rebelling against, as they ricochet from a Dale Farm sit-in to the Occupy London Stock Exchange Protest outside St Paul’s Cathedral? Whaddya got?

By tribal inclination and habit, they are state-hating, government-bashing, cuts-opposing Tory loathers. No incident, no world economic crisis, no application of good sense or political fair play will ever shift them from their entrenched views.

They hate the establishment. Everything is everybody else’s fault. They are the kind of people who feel oppressed if they have to queue for their benefit cheques and free prescriptions. Or, even worse, they are pampered middle-class kids in hot pursuit of a cheap thrill.

Yes, there are genuine and heartfelt protesters out there — but all too often they are drowned out by the rent-a-cause activists, who are a plague of boils on the face of British public life today.

They demean every cause they embrace. Acting with aggression and disregard for the safety of others, they only muddy the waters and make the problem worse for those with a genuine grievance. They are always the violent minority, whose sole ambition seems to be to taunt and engage the long-suffering police in direct confrontation.

Yes, they are always the ones who complain about police brutality while lobbing a brick or a fire extinguisher at a cop who is only trying to do his job. How I loathe them all and their urban guerrilla pretensions.

A face of anger: Minty emerges from a tatty caravan waving her cross

Not that I am saying lovely Minty is violent. Far from it. Yet people like her, those vigilantes ever vigilant for a vigil, are becoming a bore. If the travellers ever had a case — and I don’t believe they did — the anarchist daytrippers ruined it for them. They are grief tourists who can walk away when the protest ends, unlike those directly affected by the outcome.

They should give out anorak badges for those veterans of anti-globalisation and Honk If You Support The Miners campaigns. Not all are rebels without a thought in their heads, but if they want to make a positive contribution, there is no end of things to be done. Getting a proper job would be a good start.

In the end, my sympathies remain with the law-abiding citizens of Essex who had to put up with the travellers who refused to travel for all these miserable years.

In London this week, you could almost pinpoint the exact moment that autumn arrived.

It was early on Tuesday morning, shortly after daybreak, when the last waft of the Indian summer disappeared. In its stead came a crisp tingle in the air. Hurrah.

At last. Here comes the season of misty opaque tights, tawny leaves crunching underfoot, the mushroom harvest, woolly jumpers and the heating switched on. How I have missed it!

The beardy scruff who loved me

What manner of spy scandal is this? Bearded, greying 65-year-old Mike Hancock, the Lib Dem MP for Ports-mouth South, pawing his Russian parliamentary assistant, Katia Zatuliveter, in the House when no one was looking? How tawdry can you get?

And if blonde, 26-year-old Katia really is a spy — which she denies — that’s another illusion shattered.

Close bond: The affair of Katia Zatuliveter, left, and Mike Hancock, right, shattered many illusions Jan Moir had about really good spy sex scandals

I’d always imagined a really good spy sex scandal would involve dashing men such as actors Daniel Craig and Rupert Penry-Jones; dreamboat he-hunks crushing lynx-eyed beauties against their manly chests, yet still valiantly refusing to give up state secrets in the face of irresistible sexual entreaties.

Surely, spy sex is not some grimy fondle with a married, scruffy MP who looks as malodorous as a ten-week-old turnip, a man who once sat on the Commons Select Defence Committee and who has a reputation as an unlikely lothario?

No, not true, says Katia, who also had an affair with an unnamed Nato official. As she fights in court against being deported back to Russia, she claims that her relationship with Mr Hancock was true ‘luff’.

Maybe so. But it wouldn’t have happened in Bond’s day.

Just because she can... Jennifer Aniston poses for the cameras at the Elle Women in Hollywood celebration held at The Four Seasons in Beverly Hills, California, earlier this week

Jennifer Aniston! Come to the front of the glamour class, you naughty thing.

Now listen. Yes, I admire your light-hearted touch as an actress, your underrated comedy skills, your gift for keeping cheerful despite the Brad Incident. Not to mention your infallible ability to get the best blonde streaks in the business, over and over again.

And like our very own Lulu — and just as Cher once so winningly put it in a song — you turn back time. Oh yes you do, girlfriend. You look amazing.

You’ve got that golden perma-tan with absolutely no peek of streak. How do you do that? And you always, always dress so nicely.

But what in the name of under-boobage slippage happened to you this week?

At a glamorous Hollywood event held by Elle magazine, you turned up in something that looked like a sequinned marsupial pouch.